After years of vowing to get healthy, this 41-year-old named Nikki just started #C25K to get healthy and fit once and for all.

Category Archives: Map My Walk

For starters, I’ve gone back to work full-time, which has been really, really great. And with that, of course, there’s been some bad.

My foot started acting up soon after I started, so in addition to not being able to log those five-plus mile walks every day like I’d been doing prior to getting hired, I wasn’t even able to do much more than walk — more like painfully limp, actually — to and from the subway to work and home.

It killed me, it really did, going from being so active to just doing the bare minimum. I know I’ve changed, and I like the body that all that walking over the past several months has given me. It’s not my best, nor my goal, but it’s better than it was when I started this journey, and that’s all that matters to me.

Luckily, my foot seems to be getting better (knock wood!), so the fella and I took a decent walk last Monday before doing our grocery shopping. And I cannot tell a lie: This came after a horrible, horrible weekend of eating. We’d gone back to my parents’ for the holiday weekend, and, like I’d written the month before, the food was plentiful — and not very good for us.

Wings and beer at our favorite place. A secret hot dog run. The biggest grilled steak I ever did see (and eat). A nice, big slice of an amazing early birthday cake and then an absolute massacre of a NEPA delicacy: Victory Pig pizza, which we bought frozen and ate when we got home Sunday. All 12 cuts. Gone. In one sitting.

We felt disgusting the morning after, so Monday was a total detox day, which gave a really great start to our mindset for the rest of the week. I’m happy to report that, by Friday, I lost the pounds I gained on our “Lost Weekend.” Most of it was thanks in part to being able to walk more — and the latest addition in our fitness regime: the Fitbit Flex band, which the fella’s parents gave us both as an early birthday for me and Father’s Day for him gifts.

In case you’re not familiar, Fitbit is a rubber bracelet-like device that wirelessly tracks the number of steps you take, sleep patterns, calorie burning, etc. While ours are black, the device comes in several colors, so it can be changed up to be more of an accessory to your outfits. Getting Fitbit was the fella’s idea, and he was almost to the point of annoying with how excited he was about getting one. I, on the other hand, took some convincing.

Photo from techgirl.co.za

I’m not a big wrist-jewelry wearer. I loathe watches and have one bracelet I’ve worn for years now, so I’m used to it, and I love it … but, I take it off the second I get home because I can’t sleep in any jewelry. When the fella snapped the Fitbit on me the first time, I immediately felt constricted. Compared to my bracelet, the Fitbit was ginormous. Bulky. Uncomfortable, especially to sleep in. Every time I moved, I felt it. Worried that I would turn it off or screw it up. So that first night, I didn’t sleep very well.Plus, it’s always with me. Sleeping, in the shower, should I ever find myself swimming in a pool or ocean, there it will be. That’s a commitment I don’t even make with what little jewelry I do wear, and they’re Tiffany pieces for God’s sake!

I grumbled about it the next day, tried wearing my bracelet on my left wrist since the Fitbit had to be on my non-dominant hand and felt so off-kilter I could’ve screamed. I’ve since put the bracelet back on my right wrist with the Fitbit and feel much better, thankyouverymuch.

As the week wore on, and my foot felt well enough to walk up to the fella’s work after I got out as well as some lunchtime strolls and I started looking at my Fitbit dashboard online and on the app, I started to come around. It got easier to sleep with, and the first time my wrist vibrated because I met my daily step goal, I first jumped because it startled me, and then I felt very accomplished.

Then a funny thing happened, which is what makes the product so great: I got competitive with myself. Each day I wanted to — I needed to — beat my step count from the day before and/or beat the fella, who sent me a taunt on the app, which looks similar to a Mr. Yuk sticker.Oh, hell no, fella. Hell. No.

Though I am still getting used to wearing the Fitbit, which really isn’t as bulky as I made it out to be with my set-in-my-ways way, I really think it’s revolutionized the way the fella and I look at fitness. We’re still using My Fitness Pal to track our calories (Fitbit syncs with MFP, which has been great), but after having some issues with Map My Walk, which told me on several different occasions that I walked two miles in two seconds (even though the distance from the subway to work is less than a mile and takes about five minutes), it’s been awesome to see a much more accurate measure of distance. I chalk some of my issues with MMW up to me being back in the Financial District, which, despite being the center of the financial world, is a huge reception dead zone most of the time.

While I do miss the mapping MMW did, I don’t miss having to end a workout before I go down into the subway station, meaning that the many steps I take underground through stations and on platforms go uncounted. The Fitbit counts them all, and its accuracy showed me that I really wasn’t burning as much as I thought I was, as much as MMW led me to think I was — which might finally start showing me some substantial loss on the scale now that I know my true caloric burn.

If you’re looking for something that could take your fitness/health goals to the next level, you might want to look into a Fitbit. I’m not being paid for this little write up (though if the company wants to, I won’t object, haha). I’m just a girl looking to be her healthiest self and using a product that I think makes a big difference in my life. We all know we should aim for 10,000 steps a day, and this product is helping me blow that minimum away — and helping me become the thinner, fitter person who’s getting closer and closer every day.

I figured I would hop on the scale Friday before I headed home to visit my parents for the weekend. If I was down a bit, I’d keep that top of mind when I got to the place where food was always the sixth member of our family (after the parents, the brother, me and our beloved late Lab, Zakk).

I was pleasantly surprised to find I was down a full 20 pounds — it felt like it was a long time coming, but I’m glad I finally hit this major milestone. So excited by that number — and the fact that I was running extremely late to catch the 11 a.m. out of Port Authority — I didn’t have time to eat or grab a snack to take on the bus with me before I left the house.

Needless to say, by the time I got of the bus more than three hours later and after a grocery-store trip where we got about three bags full of carbs (think three different kinds of chips, two different kinds of pretzels, a loaf of bread, hamburger buns and this super-yummy baked oatmeal from the bakery department), I was famished. And bordering on hangry. So I opened one of the bag of pretzels and ate a few handfuls as I drove.

We picked up some Wendy’s salads, and I’m proud to say that my hunger didn’t force me to weaken and get the crispy chicken sandwich and fries I really wanted. I got a salad, and after I ate it when we got home, it just wasn’t hitting the spot. I went back to the pretzels I opened in the car. Then I dipped into the baked oatmeal. I went back to the pretzels and then I just felt sick. And ashamed of myself.

But that didn’t stop us from going out to a nice dinner later on that night. I had soup and ahi tuna, so my dinner wasn’t that bad, but I still felt awful, both because I knew I had eaten way, way too much and because I was severely disappointed in myself.

I woke up Saturday determined to be better. I decided to go for a walk, but since my folks live on a dirt road, and it had rained so it was all mud, I headed to the track at my old high school. I love walking on those rubbery tracks, but my God, they are so boring compared to walking the city streets or the woods surrounding my parents’ where I really wanted to walk, so after I hit the two-mile mark, I told myself I’d do another half mile and head home.

Just as I started the final two laps, a woman who had continually outpaced me — and I was walking “very brisk,” according to Map My Walk — passed me again, but this time she said hello and commented on how nice the day was so far. We started walking together and talking about walking, health and we even shared weight-loss tips with each other.

Before we knew it, we both exceeded our walking goals — by two and a half miles! It was great to have someone to pass the time with, and Denise and I exchanged numbers to continue sharing tips and walk the next time I’m back in Dallas. It was such a pleasant surprise, one that doesn’t really happen here in the city, where you just start chatting with a stranger.

I was so glad our walking paths crossed, and her pushing me to go those extra miles was instrumental in keeping me on the straight and narrow the rest of my time at home. Of course I ate Mom’s famous whimpies, but I only had one with a bun and just a small follow-up scoop of the meat, and when I still felt hungry, I had grilled chicken with spinach and balsamic. While I treated myself to some chips, I didn’t house most of the bag like I used to do.

I stayed pretty good on Sunday, and when I weighed myself Monday morning — just as a check up, not because I have an obsession with the scale — I had maintained Friday’s weight, which had always been unheard of after a weekend at home.

I knew going home to my parents, who used to own a restaurant and always had the best food around the house, would be a huge test to the willpower I’ve been building the past few months, but I daresay I passed with flying colors.

My previous post about walking 25 miles over the course of a weekend, while I find it super impressive, is just part of what a normal week is for me. This week, for example, I’ve already exceeded 25 miles, and it’s only Thursday, and I’ll be putting on my Reeboks as soon as this post is done and logging another six or seven miles by the time I get home.

According to the first-quarter stat update from Map My Walk, I’ve already done 205 miles in 2014, and the e-mail said I’m “on track to hit 822” by yearend. I love a challenge, so I plan to raise that number by 178 to make it an even 1,000 miles at least.

Having said that and that fact that I’ve been walking my ass off and feeling my jeans get bigger and getting back into some of the clothes that have been shoved into the bottom of a drawer or the back of my closet, the scale has just been an unbudging SOB. In fact, it even went back up five pounds, which I know is a bold-faced lie because 1) I’m wearing those clothes that finally fit again, 2) I definitely see a difference in my face and stomach and 3) I am more often than not eating less than my caloric allowance because of all that damn walking, which is obviously a key to weight loss.

The scale has been giving me NO love lately. (Getty Images photo)

It’s been depressing me, to be honest, and the old me would’ve been derailed by my weekly (or multi-weekly, if I’m being completely honest) weigh-ins ten times over, so what the hell gives? I have never eaten so well, so clean and so good in my life — I mean, I am eating spinach and other veggies and fruits like it’s my damn job, we’ve pretty much cut out everything white and hardly eat a starch with dinner anymore. I actually crave all these good things on a daily basis, and even on the weekends, when we have our one lax day where we might, say, have an Irish breakfast for brunch or indulge in a burger or share a lemon gingerbread cookie at our favorite bakery, it’s usually after one of our mammoth walks so at the end of the day, I still have a ton of calories left over.

So yes, scale, I am having a pretty big beef with you right now. I’ve been chalking it up to the fact that it was the cheapest scale they had at the store when I bought it last year, but c’mon. It’s one of those stupid old non-digital ones, how could you not work properly? Especially after you showed me that 15-pound loss so lovingly just a few weeks back?

Last night, I finally confessed my depression about the whole thing to the fella, and he found it BS, too, saying he knows I’ve been losing because he sees it when he looks at me and knows how well I’ve been doing. He thought maybe it’s because it’s a cheapo scale and that maybe, since he was standing on one of the floorboards that creak in the house because it’s slightly raised, where I’m stepping on in the bedroom might be uneven or something.

With that in mind this morning, when I finally decided to hop back on (it’s been about a week since I last weighed myself because of this whole scale-hating episode), I moved the scale and voila, there was that lower needle that I’ve been looking for, thank the gods of weight loss!

In my years (and years) of trying to lose, I have always read in fitness magazines and on blogs that you should throw your scale out because of the very reason I’m about to mention as the reason I just can’t perform said action. Most women have been trained to think in numbers when it comes to weight, not just “going by how your clothes feel” like those blogs and magazine articles tell us to do.

It’s really hard for me to not track my progress with a scale, and I think that not having one when we first moved to New York, though it was not the sole catalyst for the weight gain I am now battling, I do regret not having one to check in on. I think seeing the number creep up might’ve helped get me in line a lot more than my tightening pants, which is stupid, I know, but I think some of you will agree with me that we sometimes come up with excuses like, “Oh, they were just washed,” and then come home with the button imprint embedded on our bellies.

So what about you? Are you a slave to a scale or a go-by-the-fit-of-my jeans kind of person? I’d love to hear your tips and suggestions!

Ever since I downloaded it, I have been obsessed with Map My Walk. I always knew that I covered a lot of ground walking around the city, but it’s pretty amazing to see just how much it all adds up to.

Take this weekend, for example. From Friday to Sunday, I walked a record (for me) 25 miles around this great island.

My 12-mile journey on Friday took me from 34th Street down to St. Mark’s and the Bowery, to the Village and SoHo, where I met up with the fella after work and we walked uptown on the West Side, stopping to eat before catching a train home at 59th Street. We laid low on Saturday, only logging one mile, when, since I cannot tell a lie, we walked to the neighborhood taco truck for dinner.It is what it is.

The route of yesterday’s 12-mile excursion.

We more than made up for that yesterday, when we walked from 14th Street all the way home to 149th, which included wandering through Central Park, where we met up with the Girl Child at 81st Street. Thanks to zigzagging blocks here and there and walking through the park, we logged another 12 miles for the day.

It’s invigorating, really, to see how far I go and how my pace varies throughout the course of a walk, and I find it a great motivator to keep going, to best my last mile’s pace or get just one extra block in … which usually turns in to two or five or 10.

Next weekend, if the stupid weather cooperates, we’re planning on doing our biggest walk yet: The whole island of Manhattan, from Inwood down to Battery Park. It should be pretty easy because Manhattan is a little more than 13 miles, which is only one more mile than I’ve already done twice just this weekend.

And looking even further into our fitness future, we plan to add jogging into the mix and start taking part in some of the many 5Ks held in the city. Even if I can’t jog all or part of those races at first, I know I can make those 3.1 miles my bitch pretty easily, especially given the mileage I’ve accomplished this weekend — and this is just the beginning!

I hopped on the scale today and was extremely pleased to see the number down 15 pounds!

I’ve been working my tail off with exercising and eating right, and I love seeing it pay off like this.

I’ve continued to be super mindful of tracking my food in My Fitness Pal and all my movements in Map My Walk, and, thanks to the fella and I taking advantage of last weekend’s glorious 50-degree temps, we walked almost 17 miles on Saturday and Sunday combined. On Saturday, we found a new path along the Hudson that led us to The Little Red Lighthouse, and on Sunday, we walked from 43rd, through Central Park and home to 149th. Needless to say, I think my new purple Reeboks are officially broken in!

According to my weekly summary from MMW for March 3-March 9, I did 10 workouts for 8.2 hours, covered 23.5 miles and burned 5,405 calories. Not too shabby I daresay! I think when I’m down 30 pounds, I am going to start incorporating jogging as part of my walks to help ward off any plateaus and to, you know, start putting the “run” back into Run, Nikki, Run!

Just as I was getting balls deep into a week-plus cycle of sleeping through the night, I was wide awake this morning at 2 a.m. and stayed that way until almost 6 a.m.

Since I was up, I did what any good girl would do while the rest of the house and building slumbered and took to Netflix, where I continued my recent tear of watching fabulous documentaries about fabulous New Yorky people, like the Kennedys and Diana Vreeland (can I just pause to mention how frigging fantastic she was?? Such style! Such great vision! Watching it made me realize that even though I work from home, there’s no reason I shouldn’t dress up or not wear lipstick around the house on a daily basis because why the hell not? I just might be wearing my best red lips right now if you must know. It goes fantastically with my black yoga pants!).

Last night started with a program about Candy Darling, one of Andy Warhol’s Superstars. She was so beautiful and tragic, and it’s kind of BS that she, who was born as a man, had better cheekbones than I do. I also tried to watch a doc about Halston, but the interviewer was so unprofessional and stupid I had to turn it off after 10 minutes. But I watched enough of it to see some of Liza Minnelli’s fantabulous apartment and have decided that I would like to have that be my “downtown” pad, so don’t be surprised if you hear a ding-dong one of these days, “Lucille 2.”

Anyway, now that that’s all out of my system, even though I super-cleaned the apartment and did some work, all day I felt sluggish and on the verge of a binge. I know it was definitely because I was so tired mixed with the fact that I know for a fact I haven’t been drinking as much water as I should lately (for shame!). It wasn’t until I took the garbage outside that I realized how nice it was here in New York today — like, almost 40 degrees nice! — so I came back upstairs, put on some workout clothes, downloaded a new pedometer app that works with My Fitness Pal called Map My Walk and out the door I went.

The fella had gone to a nutritionist last night, and she gave him a meal plan that the two of us are going to put into practice ASAP. Some of the stuff, like cutting out white foods and most of the processed junk in our lives and adding some more fish and protein-rich foods into our diets we’ve actually done in recent weeks, so hopefully this will be an easy transition and lifestyle change.

We’re both pretty excited and hopeful that this will be the thing that sticks, finally. If you’ve been reading RNR for any amount of time, you know I’ve fallen off and gotten back on the exercise/healthy-eating wagon more times than Chris Christie has been in the news in recent weeks. Sad but true, but I know that us doing this together is a key to success. And a little — OK, a lot of — competition between the two of us is sure to kick things up a notch, especially because the bastard males of the species lose weight so much faster than women. Hmmph.

Now that I logged a brisk almost two-mile walk this evening, I feel better, less on-the-verge-of-binging and more quiet inside my head. I tell ya, they were onto something with this thing called exercise …